“Has he ever been unable to respond in a crisis or to take an appropriate action?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Does his ability to make decisions seem impaired?”
“Not after the episodes are over. He’s the most decisive man I’ve ever known.”
“Then would it be fair to say that you do not perceive him to be rendered incapable?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“But what about during the episodes?” Swinburne barked. “What if a crisis breaks out while he’s having one? Like now!”
Admiral Cartwright glared. “It is not your turn to speak, Mr. Swinburne. Please desist.”
Swinburne folded his arms across his chest. “My apologies,” he grumbled.
“So, Sarie,” Ben continued, “I gather you would not want to label the president incapable. Or insane.”
She hesitated. “No. I would not want to.”
Not quite good enough. Ben wanted her to distinguish these odd episodes from genuine and severe insanity. He tried again. “Sarie, do you have any experience with people suffering from mental illness?”
“Yes, actually I do.” She folded her hands in her lap. “You may not know this, but one summer when I was in college I worked at a state hospital. In the mental ward.”
Ben’s stomach was churning. Why did he suddenly have the distinct feeling he was going to regret having asked this question?
“I spent the whole summer changing sheets and dishing out pills. Caring for the inmates. It was educational—but also very chilling. I had never been around such disturbed people in my entire life. I never got used to it. There was just something… different about them. I’m not talking about their behavior. I mean, when I looked into their eyes. Shakespeare says the eyes are the window to the soul, and I guess that’s right, because whenever I looked into these people’s eyes, it seemed like something was missing. Something was… wrong.”
Ben tried to cut her off, but she ignored him. Tears began to trickle out of her eyes. “And when I sat beside President Kyler on the roof that night and I looked into his eyes, I saw the same look. The same vacancy. The same wrongness.”
The whispering in the room spiked. Cartwright pounded on the table, but it made little difference. On the television, the cabinet members watched with gaping mouths.
Sarie tried to control her broken voice. “I’m sorry, Roland. I’m so, so sorry. You are a good man. But you are not well. You need help. And I hope you will get that help, because I know there is so much you can contribute to the world. But not now.” Tears flowed. Her voice rose an octave, then cracked altogether. “I
am
sorry, but it’s true. We’re in a crisis situation, and we need a leader, someone dependable, not someone who might start having an irrational episode at any moment—might be having one now for all we know!”
She reached out to him with both hands. “Roland, you need to step down. You need to do it now. For everyone’s sake. Please!”
After that, the room descended into chaos. Cartwright tried to regain control, but it was useless. Everyone was talking at once, expressing their opinion, their contempt, their outrage. Ben couldn’t pick up the televised conversation, but he could see the discussion among the cabinet members was equally agitated. Everyone was talking.
Everyone except the primary subject of the chatter. President Kyler rose, quietly slipped into the other room, and closed the door behind him.
Swinburne moved toward Admiral Cartwright. “Judge, we rest our case.”
“I thought you might.”
“Furthermore, given what we’ve heard, and given the exigencies of time, I will ask again that we move to an immediate roll call vote. Honestly, Kincaid, what could you possibly put in evidence at this point that would change anyone’s mind?”
Which was exactly the question Ben had just been asking himself.
Ben was not a quitter. Not ever. Went totally against all his instincts, all his training.
But what was there to do? Kyler had been shown to have a serious medical condition, diabetes, and to be dangerously unstable, threatening to kill himself in front of millions of people. It was obvious he couldn’t function during these episodes. Wasn’t it?
What was left to do?
Of course, Kyler could’ve said the same thing when Ben had come to ask him a special favor….
Ben closed his eyes. He would not give up on the man. But he needed to talk to him. And he needed a minute to think. To plan. To come up with… something.
Because if he didn’t come up with something fast, something new, something unexpected, there was no question about how the vote would go. Not only was Ben certain that the president would be removed if the vote were taken at that moment, but he suspected it would be unanimous.
“I’m telling you, I won’t talk!”
Seamus had to stifle his laughter. Harold Bemis was clenching shut his eyes and mouth and standing rigid as a stick. He looked like nothing so much as a little boy who was determined to hold his breath till he passed out.
Seamus saw security arriving through a back entrance. Better late than never. He pulled out his ID and waited.
Are—are you going to waterboard me? Then take those awful pictures?”
“It might come to that,” Seamus said. “But for the moment, I think I’m content to extract information from your cell phone.”
“What? How?”
Seamus pulled up the last text message Bemis had received and saw that the number was blocked. No surprise there. He checked the recent cell activity on the phone. Bemis had received a lot of blocked-number texts in the past few weeks. But the four that had come today were local, and a few knowledgeable taps into the inner workings of the phone showed Seamus that they had a different point of origination than the others.
Because today, Seamus surmised, Ishmael was at the base firing the missiles according to Colonel Zuko’s orders.
The security officers started barking questions. That lasted about five seconds, until Seamus flashed his badge and demonstrated that they were not the top-ranking officers on the premises. He didn’t like to be rude, but he was working under a deadline and he simply had no time for rent-a-cops, especially not ones who took about twice as long to react to a dangerous scene as they should have done.
“I’ve got to get out of here. Call my office when you’re ready to write your reports.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll secure the crime scene.”
“Right. Oh, except—” Seamus crouched down by the inert body of the man who had tried to kill him—and yanked his car keys out of the back of his neck. “I’ll need these.”
The security cops stared at him, their mouth gaping.
Seamus left the two suspects in their care and started back toward the street, hauling Arlo behind him.
“How do you know where the base is?” Arlo asked, walking fast, trying to keep up.
“I don’t. Yet. But I will.” He punched a few buttons on Bemis’s phone. Someone picked up on the first ring. “Zira?”
“I’m here, Seamus. Have you found the base?”
“Almost. Two things first. Do you have a fix on my location?”
“Of course.” Like everyone else in the Agency, Seamus had a cell phone equipped with a homing device that allowed the central office to track him at all times.
“Good. I just left two suspects about two hundred feet behind me in a Macy’s department store. One is the computer genius who’s been conspiring with the enemy. The other is muscle. Gun muscle, anyway. You might want to send some boys over to interrogate them. Although the muscle may be dead. I’m not really sure.”
“Seamus, what in—”
“And I don’t think the geek knows anything,” he continued, ignoring her. “But it never hurts to try.”
“Seamus, so help me, if you’ve done anything—”
“I haven’t. Honest.” He had to smile. Tweaking Zira was his only pleasure in this otherwise grim day. “But here’s what I need you to do. I’m calling you now on the geek’s phone. Get a lock on the signal and look up his calling records. Someone has texted him four times today. The calling number was blocked. But I know you can get around that.”
“In a New York minute.” She began barking orders to some underling nearby.
“Can they do that?” Arlo asked while they walked.
“Which? Hack into a private citizen’s phone records, or pierce the veil to learn who made a given call? Doesn’t matter. Either way, they can.” And the NSA does it a lot more than we do, he wanted to add. But some family secrets were best kept private.
By the time they reached the car, Zira had an answer for him. “The phone was purchased at a convenience store. We’re triangulating on its signal to find its current location.” She paused. “It’s in northern Maryland.”
“Got it.”
“Call me as soon as you know something?”
“Always.” He snapped the phone shut and slid behind the wheel. Arlo hopped into the passenger side.
“Um, look, kid… I think this is where you get off.”
“What? No way.”
“You’ve been helpful, finding Bemis and all. But this next stop is likely to be dangerous. I can’t bring a civilian into it.”
“I saved your life.”
“And I appreciate what you’ve done—but not enough to let you get killed at the next stop.”
“But what if you need me to identify some computer gizmo or something?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. What kind of stuff do international terrorists usually have?”
Seamus smiled. “Get out, kid. I’ll send you a postcard when it’s all over.”
“I refuse.”
“Don’t make me get rough.”
“What if this isn’t the base? What if you need to track down another computer geek?”
Seamus craned his neck. “Well…”
“It’s possible.”
“It’s… remotely possible.” He frowned, then put the car into drive and pulled out into the light traffic. “All right. You can stay. But you do everything I tell you to do.”
“Got it.”
“Most important, this time, when I tell you to stay in the car, you actually stay in the goddamn car!”
“Got it!” Arlo said, holding up his hands. “I understand. Completely!”
“Good.” Seamus turned down a side street. He knew a shortcut that might get them to their destination ten minutes earlier. Especially since traffic wasn’t bad.
“So,” Arlo asked, “what are you going to do when you get there?”
Seamus shrugged.
“Right. You make it up as you go along. But if these people are launching missiles and hiding from the government, don’t you think the place will be guarded?”
“I can handle guards.”
“What about alarms? Motion detectors? Laser webs?”
“Been there, done that.”
“Ugly men with big guns? More than you can take down at once?”
Seamus gave him a fierce look. “I’m bringing in the people who blew up my man’s memorial. Before they can do something even worse. No matter what it takes.” He paused, then turned his eyes back to the road. “Even if I have to die in the process.”
Admiral Cartwright had granted Ben what was possibly the most generous gift he had ever received in his entire professional career: five minutes. From the fewer than forty they had left.
He joined Kyler in the briefing room. He had never expected to be in a position to woodshed the president of the United States, but that’s what it had come to.
“You need to level with me,” Ben said. “What’s going on?”
President Kyler held up his hands helplessly. “I just don’t know!”
“Do you know what brings these episodes on?”
“If I did, don’t you think I would’ve done something to prevent it?”
“Do you remember what happened when they’re over?”
“Sort of. In a hazy way. Almost as if I were recalling a dream. Something that seems almost real but isn’t.”
“Was Sarie lying?”
“I don’t think so.” He lowered his eyes. “I don’t have any reason to believe so.”
“Her account is pretty much the way it happened?”
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“So you remember sitting on the roof talking about offing yourself on live television, but it never occurred to you that maybe you ought to get some help?”
“The president does not have the option of just getting help!” he exclaimed. “The president can’t do anything without a hundred different people knowing. A thousand! I can’t even get a prescription without it going through a dozen desks, and then they have to buy it under at least three assumed names so no one is sure what exactly, if anything, went to me. And there’s a reason for that. Do you know what would happen to my standing in the world community if these medical issues came to light? Or what would happen to my chances for reelection?”
Ben was frustrated, but he supposed it was true. The president lived on display, and there was nothing he could do without someone somewhere seeing.
“All right, look. We’ll try another approach. This business about you and Zuko—I don’t believe for a minute that you’re motivated by some idiotic executive alpha-male arm-wrestling match.”
“Well, thank you for that, anyway.”
“So what is it? Why are you being so hardheaded about Kuraq?”
Kyler drew in his breath. “The United States cannot give in to terrorists, even if they are the leaders of a powerful nation. If we start that, in no time—”
“Will you stop already?” Ben said. “I’ve already heard the standard line. I’m bored to tears with it. I don’t believe you would put so many lives at risk over a matter of principle. That isn’t the man I voted for, the one who talked about global peace and a new world order. There has to be something more.”
No response.
“Well?”
Kyler’s voice was quiet. “Those people who went down in the helicopter… deserve to be rescued.”
“No one doubts that. But your best chances would be with a small razor-sharp task force. You don’t need to send in every battalion you’ve got stationed out there.”
“There’s more to it than you know.”